Tag: TV

March 17, 2026 – Forgotten In Time

March 17, 2026 /

If you were listening yesterday, then you will know that my life is in limbo. What was supposed to be the final push and a move to the new house turned into more uncertainty. Because we are renting the new house, we certainly could have moved anyway however I made the call that we were not ready. Truth be told is that we were not.

A huge effort has been made, my shed, shop and garage are 100% ready. Most of the rooms that we live in are somewhere between zero and 75% ready. I am still selling things and 100% focused on getting ready. So, it is not all a bad thing that we didn’t just jump off of the cliff.

In my shed, there was a bucket. It was full of chain and garden stakes. This was all stuff left when we moved in or I picked up in the yard. I put the chain the bucket and it was shoved in the back of the shed. When it came to packing, I decided to take the steel over to the neighbors for scrap purposes. At the bottom of the bucket, but above all of this chain was these old advertisements.

One is a monthly mailer from a regional chain and the other is the weekly Sears advertisement from the Sunday paper. I had known that they were there there. It is one of those things that I saw once every couple of years. I don’t know why I never threw them out. I know that I have thought several times that they didn’t belong in the bucket, but I never did.

While packing, I finally got to the point that I was no longer going to store this trash. Before I threw it out, I decided that I would check the date for fun. The best that I can surmise is that this is from mid-September 2005. I know this because the coupon book below, the prices would run for a month. So, because it says that it is valid through October 9, it had to be September 6. They run their prices Tuesday through Monday.

I know what was happening in my life at that time. That was immediately following Labor Day. That particular Labor Day Sunday, we had returned from Hawaii because my brother had just gotten married. I picked up some kind of crud and I ended up spending three more days in bed following a week of vacation on Oahu and Maui. This was the beginning of life as I know it now. We had only lived in that house nine months and we had yet to learn that our first son would be delivered the following July.

I thought it would be interesting to see how time has changed. First of all, Sears no longer exists for all practical purposes. The one page that I thought would be illustrative was the electronics page. A 30″ ‘widescreen’ was $800 on sale! I have a slightly newer 32″ that I paid $12 for two years ago. New TVs of that size are $99 all day long, granted they are Toshiba but even those I see are going for $109 on Amazon.

The past was certainly the golden age of ammunition. I see that 12 gauge game loads are $3.29 a box. That very same load is $10.99 at Sportsman’s Warehouse. OK, that hurts but nowhere near the price of 38 special. I see that same box going for $35.99. If you are doing the math, that is over a four times price increase in twenty years. Things aren’t so bad if you are a 9mm shooter. The sale price of $5.99 is today $14.99.

That is comparing apples to apples, if I just want to compare cost, I can see CCI brass 9mm at $9.99 on sale. So that is less than double what it was. I will also admit that Sportsman’s Warehouse will never compete dollar for dollar against Bi-mart but it is a place that I can go locally and purchase the same brands and they have a website that I can reference prices. What is more lost in time is not the prices but what was on sale.

When is the last time you saw 25 Auto on sale? That is something I never paid any attention to in the first place. But what I will comment on is when was the last time I saw 38 special on sale. I have to say that it was probably pre-Obama 2012.

End Your Programming Routine: Times change, I get that. I still wish that there was a Sears and TVs were more than disposable item. Sure, image quality is better today but they certainly don’t function as well or last as long. If we are judging our society, the metric I would not pick is TV prices. A proliferation of TVs really has not helped our society become better. It has just helped us surrender to the tech giants. We have given our privacy, our data and with it a part of our souls.

June 4, 2024 – Man, Americans Love Cheap TVs

June 4, 2024 /

I include myself in that statement as well. I have been looking for the final piece for my office and I found it at a second hand store a couple of weeks ago. It is a Panasonic 32″ LCD TV. The best part is that I paid $12.50 for it. I plan on using it for a second monitor as well as connecting techno junk to it. I have a VCR, Blu-ray player and an X-Box 360.

It is not something that I do a lot, but every so often I stop into second hand stores looking for techno junk. I had hoped that I would be farther along but I am looking for to build my younger son a hi-fi system. I want a receiver that has a phono input and a turntable first. The trick is, it has to be a reasonable price. I see them for $75-100 occasionally but that is too much in my mind when I can buy them on eBay for $50.

It seems like two or three years ago, I saw many to fit my criteria. But, it seems like the market caught onto the steal of a deal these $25 receivers were. Phono inputs disappeared from about 2000 to 2020. The point of those is that they are amplified inputs whereas plugging into one of the other choices are not. That means that you can put a DVD into a CD input and the only harm would be the label not matching. But, you cant plug a traditional record player into a CD input, it sounds bad.

The point of all of that is receivers became ubiquitous in the same time that phono inputs were phased out. Now, audio/visual systems are out of vogue to be replaced by sound bars. We did the same ourselves which is why I ended up with the system in my office. But, this also makes finding the right receiver significantly difficult to find.

I should be writing about TVs and not audio equipment. I have considered buying several different TVs. What made this one different was the price. The sticker said $25 and it was half off. It doesn’t hurt that it is a Panasonic.

We have three different brands in our house. We have two Samsungs that are LED TVs. We have a Magnavox that is an LCD TV and a Panasonic that is a Plasma TV. I say all of the time that I don’t watch much TV and I truly don’t. But, the one I watch the most is the smallest (32″ Magnavox). I turn on the news while I am cooking or a game while I am canning.

The TV that I like the most is the Plasma TV. It was our first flat screen. I appreciate the color of TV. I find it to be the brightest in all lighting conditions. It is big enough but it seems like it is not compensating for something else. I hate the washed out LED screens. I don’t like the bluish cast that they make either.

I have been a longtime fan of the brand Panasonic. It is sad that they lost out in the TV wars because I think that they made some of the best electronics around. Our last TV we replaced around Super Bowl I was about to throw a brick through it. It would turn off while watching, it would fail to turn on and the software was garbage. It was one of those Chinese brands not allowed in the government buildings out of spyware concerns.

One downside of buying used is often things are missing. In this case it is the remote control. That will likely cost more than the TV itself. But, the good news is that since I already have a Panasonic TV, VCR and DVD player plus a universal remote for my receiver, I will not rush out and buy one. I will look for one second hand and if I never find one, it wont be a big deal.

End Your Programming Routine: My techno junk pursuit is all about opportunity. I am only willing to buy it if it is cheap. Anybody can plunk down a chunk of change and setup a shiny system. I am all about keeping good old equipment running, even if it is out of vogue. It is doubly exciting when it is a bargain.